


One For Sorrow

by ishafel



Series: Same Old Story [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M, Mpreg, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 15:35:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6121134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seb never thought he'd be the kind of omega who ends up pregnant and alone and forty-five.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One For Sorrow

He chalks the dizziness and the nausea up to Post- Concussion Syndrome at first, and then to a possible ulcer, because holding the biggest criminal syndicate in Eurasia together had been enough to send Jim over the edge and the longer Seb does it the more he sympathizes. He misses a couple of heats, but he’s on the wrong side of forty and it could be stress or it could be he’s just getting old. His knees pop and his back aches and he chalks it up to hormones and ignores it.

He’s five months along before he looks in the mirror and realizes why none of his clothes fit, why running eight kilometres feels like running twenty, why no amount of antacids helps his heartburn. He’s like one of those idiot kids who has a baby in the toilet at school and can’t quite believe it.

The cutoff for a legal abortion is eighteen weeks for omegas-- and that’s with the alpha’s permission, of course. Seb is twenty weeks, and he has no intention of telling the father. He could still get rid of it; there are a dozen backalley abortionists, and some of them even specialize in omegas. He should get rid of it.

A baby has never been something he wanted, not when he was eighteen and one of the first omegas to be sent into combat, not after the Gulf War when he got his commission and went to Sandhurst, not in Kosovo, not in Afghanistan. Not when the brass fucked up and needed someone to blame and he was handy, because apparently being an omega Colonel was pretty much like being chimpanzee Colonel.

Not even when he was with Jim, which was the longest running relationship he’d ever had. Not that Jim’s particular brand of crazy needed to be passed on, anyway, but he’d spent his whole life pretending not to be an omega. Pretending that biology was just another enemy to be fought to a standstill.

In the army he’d had to take the Pill, and he’d kept taking it afterward, even though it was almost impossible for civilians to get. Jim had gotten it for him, and never said a word. And then Jim had died, and Seb hadn’t known where to get it and it hadn’t seemed to matter since he wasn’t planning on sleeping with anyone and if he did he’d just use protection.

It’s only ever the first day of his heat that’s very bad. Maybe because he spent so long on the suppressant, maybe he’s just always been a crap omega, but it’s not like in films where the omegas go into raging heat that can’t be slaked except by the hungry cock of an alpha. Seb mostly has one day of being pretty horny and crampy and uncomfortable, followed by a couple of days of being mildly horny and tired, and then he’s good for three months.

The thing with Watson is stupid and unlike him and at the time he chalks it up to concussion from the bomb blast and his heat coming on, but it never comes and there’s always a disaster on the horizon and he forgets. Doesn’t take Plan B, which theoretically an alpha would need to get for him anyway. Doesn’t think about it again for five months until he realizes none of clothes fit right despite the fact that he hasn’t been eating properly because he always feels a little sick.

He’d almost rather it was a tumor, but he knows it isn’t.

Seb rolls in to Boots and shoplifts three different pregnancy tests and every one of them comes back positive. He clears his schedule for the rest of the day and goes back to bed, lying with arm over his face wondering how the shit he let this happen. He should get rid of it, but it’s the only family he has left, the only thing he has-- he can’t do it.

Instead he spends three weeks destroying everything he and Jim built. It’s oddly satisfying, the more so because he knows the fallout from it will keep both the Holmes brothers-- and John Watson-- busy for months. He packs a bag full of guns and passports and cash. He breaks legs and takes potshots from thirteenth story windows. He waits. 

And then he disappears. Jim had boltholes all over Europe, flashy and impractical penthouse suites and abandoned warehouses and a crumbling castle and a houseboat on the Rhine. Seb has a grimy one bedroom walkup in Glasgow, and an aging Chevy Malibu stashed in a garage on the outskirts of London.

While the import export business is literally going up in flames and the arms dealership’s being raided, he drives to Scotland, stopping at a fuel station on the M5 to swap the Malibu for a battlescarred Volvo that already has a carseat installed. He tries not to feel guilty about that. He tries not to flinch when he passes a camera, barely able to see to drive through his enormous fake beard. 

The flat in Glasgow is a shitbox, filthy and quite possibly rat-infested, but it’s clear, untraceable to Sebastian Moran. He scrubs it up as best he can, props the mattress up with a sheet of plywood and throws a blanket over the sagging sofa. He’s big enough now he’s starting to show, but at least it’s October and his old rusty black peacoat covers the worst of the bump. He pays cash for everything, spending it sparingly because he doesn’t know how long it’ll be before he can work again.

According to the baby book, he hasn’t gained enough weight. He hasn’t been taking vitamins, hasn’t been eating or sleeping properly, didn’t stop smoking or drinking until far too late. He’s old to be having a baby, too; most omegas are done by thirty-five, not starting at forty-five. He doesn’t go to a doctor. He has a plan, but it doesn’t start until after the baby’s born. He can’t risk being in the system before that. Somewhere, Mycroft Holmes has his DNA on file and is just waiting for it to be flagged.

Women and omegas have been having babies for millions of years without medical care. There’s nothing an ultrasound or amnio can do for him now, anyway. If he’s caught, he’ll go to prison. They’ll make him carry the baby to term regardless of what’s wrong with it, and he’ll never see it. It will go into the system, probably, be a foster child like Jim was. 

Seb has it alone in his flat a week before Christmas. It’s much worse than being shot, the worst pain he’s ever felt. There’s a lot of tearing, more bleeding than he thinks there should be, and he doesn’t dare scream or the neighbors will call the police for sure. But then she’s born, and she’s perfect.

Tiny, barely five pounds, despite the fact that she felt like twenty, but perfect. Seb counts her fingers and toes, admiring her dark blue eyes and the dark blonde fuzz on her head. When it’s time to feed her she latches on to his nipple like she’s been doing it forever. He lies in the bloody wreck of the bed, too exhausted even to get up and change the sheets, and feels her breathing against his bare chest.

It’s the most amazing thing in the world, having a baby. He calls her Isobel, which was his great grandmother’s name, because he won’t give her his last name, can’t give her anything that might tie her to Sebastian Moran. He’s the only family she’ll ever have, not his sister, who doesn’t know he’s still alive, or his father, who probably hopes he isn’t, and not John Watson who presumably thinks he’s on the run somewhere in Serbia.

He waits until she’s a month old to take her to the free clinic in the roughest part of town. She’s very healthy, exceeding all the milestones in the baby book, gaining weight like a champ, good reflexes, the beginning of a smile when she sees him. Seb’s not doing so well himself. He’s still bleeding, still tired all of the time, still not hungry. Just doing the minimum necessary to survive, bathing and laundry and shuffling groceries and Isobel up the stairs, wrecks him the way a forty mile forced march or a two mile swim never did. Omegas aren’t meant to do this alone; their bodies aren’t designed for it. Still, his whole life he’s done things omegas aren’t meant to do.

The papers he has are quality, forged by a now-deceased master. They identify him as a Syrian refugee, an omega with an alpha dead in Damascus. Isobel’s birthplace is listed as a camp near Dunkirk. It’s the perfect cover because no one in their right mind would pretend to be Syrian just now-- at least, no one without the spectre of Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes looming. Seb’s father was a civil servant and he grew up in the Middle East. Seb speaks the Levantine dialect well enough to pass as a native. 

This is what he can give Isobel: citizenship in the E.U., freedom from the burden of the Moran name and legacy, a clean start with a mother that isn’t a criminal. 

Seb’s papers are accepted without a second glance. They even call in a translator, a polite, dumpy young woman who admires Isobel and does her best to soften the doctor’s harsh words. And they are harsh. Seb speaks better English than the doctor even with his fake accent. This is the other thing he is giving Isobel: a start as a second-hand citizen, the trash of Europe washed up in a city that is arguably the asshole of the British Isles.

The doctor disapproves of refugees and Muslims and very much of omegas. He thinks Seb isn’t capable of being a single parent, that Isobel should be in care and Seb should be shipped back to Syria and served to ISIL on a platter. Isobel passes her well-baby exam with flying colors, and Seb’s diagnosed with anemia and given pills, and they take the bus home and wait for things to get better.

And they do, a bit. The bleeding finally stops and the tears heal, and Isobel spends longer and longer amounts of time awake. But Seb is still tired and Glasgow is still cold and wet and miserable, too bloody to take a baby out in. Sometimes a week goes by in which he doesn’t talk to anyone but Isobel.

Post-partum depression, he thinks, shuffling through the shop with Isobel in a sling under his coat. Seasonal-affective disorder. Maybe even his old friend PTSD. Omegas are prone to psychiatric disorders when separated from support systems. But he has no desire to discuss it with the doctor at the clinic, and even if he found a psychiatrist who took cash, it’s not like he can take anti-depressants while he’s breastfeeding.

And then on a particularly bleak afternoon in March he falls asleep on the sofa and wakes to the sound of footsteps on the stairs. He’s in the third floor, and the downstairs flats are almost always empty during the day. He keeps himself to himself and he hasn’t had a visitor since he moved in. The old reflexes come back to him as if they never went. Isobel goes in her car seat in the bedroom closet, too startled even to cry, and he’s waiting at the door with a gun in his hand when the knock comes, already calculating where they’ll go next and how he’ll get them there.

“It’s Sherlock Holmes,” the man in the hallway says. “You’ve been made, Colonel, but if you cooperate I’ll personally guarantee your daughter’s safety.”

Seb lets out the breath he’s holding and slides the Luger carefully into the back of his jeans and pulls his jumper over it. He undoes the locks, one by one, and opens the door. It’s reinforced steel, strong enough to stop regular rounds, but no match for a Holmes.

Seb and Sherlock Holmes have never met, not properly, but Seb spent enough time looking at him through the crosshairs in the bad old days to know him anywhere. It’s been a year since Seb got caught up with a couple of Taliban idiots, leaked them to the government, and accidently found himself in the middle of a bombing in the London Underground and followed it up by letting Sherlock’s best friend bend him over a turnstile and fuck him sideways.

“So,” Sherlock says. “You make a surprisingly convincing refugee, Moran.”

Seb flops down on the sofa and thinks about how he wishes Jim had just killed Sherlock when he’d had the chance instead of playing with him. “How did you find me?”, he asks.

“Oh,” Sherlock looks slightly downcast. “That. I’d love to claim that it was a spectacularly clever deduction, but-- John read this while he was in between patients.” He tosses a copy of the U.K. edition of _People_ to Seb. The issue is apparently about the Beckhams going native in the Los Angeles, but there’s also a teaser about someone’s experience with the refugee crisis in Britain, and when he flips it to the dogeared article there’s a photo of the translator from the clinic. He skims it until he gets to the part about the big, quiet, blond omega with the sad eyes and the tiger inked on his shoulder, who has the kind of scars more common on soldiers and who clearly speaks English well enough to understand when he’s being insulted but is too afraid or too desperate to fight back. And of course his lovely daughter is mentioned, too, such a peaceful baby to have such a violent past. Seb might as well have put his own name on the forms; at least than he could have gone to a private doctor and written a cheque instead of dealing with this bullshit.

“You’re a criminal,” Sherlock says, “a murderer a dozen times over, and you’ve no business keeping Watson’s daughter from him.” 

Seb lifts the shade a bit to look out the window. The street looks quiet enough except for the big black car parked at the curb. He had some work done to the house when he bought the flat, but it won’t hold up to a siege. “Does Watson know you’re here?”

“Of course not. He doesn’t even know it’s his child,” Sherlock says scornfully, and Seb just wants to hit him and not stop hitting him until he’s dead. 

From the bedroom he hears the first faint sound of Isobel crying. He looks at Sherlock, wondering what to do. 

“You can run, you can fight, or you can walk away,” Sherlock says. “I know you aren’t particularly bright, but even you must be able to see how things will go.”

And Seb can. You can’t take a three month old baby on the run, or into a firefight. This is the best case scenario, really; he’ll get his freedom, a new start somewhere away from England, and Isobel will have John Watson, who is an inherently decent man, and Sherlock, who isn’t. And the might of the British government, probably, to run ID checks on her boyfriends and ensure she gets into a good university.

He goes and gets the baby, and her go bag, full of diapers and a few packets of formula and blankets and a change of clothes, and Sophie the plush giraffe. He touches her cheek once before he hands the seat to Sherlock. “Keep her safe,” he says.

Holmes must see something in his face, because he takes the carseat and bag and giraffe and goes without saying anything else. 

Seb watches the door close gently behind him and then goes into the bedroom. He should pack, he should go. Maybe back to the Middle East, there are always jobs for security contractors, even omegas. Maybe to Africa or America, somewhere he’s never been--. He hasn’t cried since the night he buried Jim, and even then it was only a couple of tears. Proper omegas in films spend most of their time crying, and they don’t cry like Seb is crying now, angry and broken and sick.

Seb should go now, before Mycroft changes his mind and has him arrested, but he won’t. For a long time the memory of Jim and the empire he’d been so proud of building was the only thing that had kept Seb going. And after that had come Isobel. Omegas aren’t meant to be alone. He should have fed her one last time before she went, because his breasts are already swelling and sensitive against the fabric of his shirt. Omegas weren’t meant to be soldiers, his father had said when he was seventeen, because they roll over and show their bellies at the first sign of trouble.

Seb isn’t giving up. But it will have to wait. All of it will have to wait until tomorrow, because right now there isn’t enough left in Seb to walk away.


End file.
